AP
As the chorus calling for President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 race gets louder, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is chiming in, urging Democrats to “stop the bickering and nit-picking.”
The two-time presidential candidate wrote in a new New York Times opinion piece Democrats need to rally around the 81-year-old Biden, calling him “the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump.”
While “Mr. Biden is old, is prone to gaffes, walks stiffly and had a disastrous debate with Mr. Trump,” the independent wrote “a presidential election is not an entertainment contest. It does not begin or end with a 90-minute debate.”
Acknowledging he disagrees with Biden on a number of key issues, Sanders, 82, said the president has “a record of real accomplishment,” while calling Trump “a demagogue and pathological liar.”
“Enough!” Sanders wrote. “Mr. Biden may not be the ideal candidate, but he will be the candidate and should be the candidate. And with an effective campaign that speaks to the needs of working families, he will not only defeat Mr. Trump but beat him badly.”
Several House Democrats, including Reps. Hillary Scholten, of Michigan, Brad Schneider, of Illinois, Ed Case, of Hawaii, and Greg Stanton, of Arizona, have urged Biden to step aside so that a stronger candidate can emerge.
Sanders said he can see why “some Democrats get nervous about having to explain the president’s gaffes and misspeaking names,” but believes that beats the alternative.
“Unlike the Republicans, [Dems] do not have to explain away a candidate who now has 34 felony convictions and faces charges that could lead to dozens of additional convictions, who has been hit with a $5 million judgment after he was found liable in a sexual abuse case, who has been involved in more than 4,000 lawsuits, who has repeatedly gone bankrupt and who has told thousands of documented lies and falsehoods,” wrote Sanders.
Sanders, whose last presidential bid was intentionally derailed by officials within the Democratic National Committee, said Biden “respects democracy” while Trump “attacks it.”
“This election offers a stark choice on issue after issue,” added Sanders. “If Mr. Biden and his supporters focus on these issues — and refuse to be divided and distracted — the president will rally working families to his side in the industrial Midwest swing states and elsewhere and win the November election. And let me say this as emphatically as I can: For the sake of our kids and future generations, he must win.”